


Freefall

by Kablob, mylordshesacactus



Series: Star Trek: Challenger [2]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Gen, Space Battles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-09-30 23:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20455088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: 1.02 | Reeling from their confrontation with space pirates, Challenger and her crew struggle to repair what's been broken.—These are the voyages of Earth’s third Warp-5 starship, Challenger. Join Captain Sofia Matos and her crew for the adventure of a lifetime, seeking out new life and new civilizations—and overcoming all the challenges they face along the way.





	1. Chapter 1

..

[X](https://youtu.be/FpdxvL61zr8?list=LLtCjrYmG1qqxEIjzhIwysBA)

“Science officer’s log,” Esther Hasdai dictated as she flopped across the armchair in her quarters. She threw her legs over one arm and propped herself up on the other, picking up a slightly undercooked taquito. “Supplemental.”

She took a bite. Not spicy enough, but not bad. And they’d lost power to a few sections of cold storage, so this was what was on the menu while they tried not to waste anything.

She swallowed and continued. “Morale on the team’s better than I expected,” she admitted to the empty room. “Considering the pounding we took, I’d have expected more of an effect, but everyone’s mostly just happy we got out alive and saved a few people on top of it. And there’s not as many casualties as you might think.” She paused and winced. “I’m not saying...look, one death is too many. But with the kind of damage  _ Challenger  _ suffered, and the kind of loss we saw in Engineering, it could’ve been a lot worse.”

She considered her taquito.

“Speaking of damage,” she continued after a moment, “We’re still working on getting this ship back into as few pieces as possible. The engine room is the worst, but right now my department’s still got no long-range scanners, and the communication array got shot clean off the hull. But we’re working on getting a replacement array set up, and then we can put some people in space and start getting back in contact. I’d say we’re en route to be in pretty good shape, as long as nothing else…”

With a long whine like turbines shutting down, the lights in her cabin turned off completely.

Esther sighed.

“Goes wrong,” she finished into the pitch-black room. “No, that’s fair. I asked for that.”

* * *

**Captain’s Log, August 3rd, 2154**

We appear to have stretched  _ Challenger _ ’s patience too far.

Tisarr, who is I suppose my new Chief Engineer for all intents and purposes, has told me not to catastrophize the situation. In fairness, it could be much worse. Life support appears undamaged, and now that Engineering has been able to replace the cracked dilithium crystal, our warp power is stable. The problem is that so many  _ other _ subsystems are damaged that it’s impossible to fix anything without direct manual access to the nacelles. As you can imagine, this is difficult to do with the warp core running.

Unfortunately, inability to go to warp, while arguably the most serious problem we face, is far from the most immediately obvious. This is a new ship; worse, she’s a new ship with a skeleton Engineering crew, and this was meant to be her shakedown run. With the kind of damage we’ve taken, nonessential subsystems have been failing intermittently for days. Lighting controls frequently reset to midnight,  _ Challenger  _ is currently running on a 26-hour day due to a glitch in the chronometry circuits, and the sonic shower system has had to be taken offline five times. 

And, of course, just this morning we experienced a complete failure of shipwide artificial gravity.

* * *

There was no dignified way to do this, Natalia realized with a grimace. Still, she did her best, gripping the backs of chairs and consoles as she attempted to walk across the bridge in zero gravity.

The turbolift  _ ding _ ed behind her, and she was almost kicked in the face as Esther Hasdai flew through the air, laughing like a maniac.

“Watch out, Commander!” she grinned, somersaulting to kick off the ceiling and catching the back of her chair, levering herself in and engaging a turbulence harness to keep herself there. “Sorry I’m late. There was a traffic jam.”

Natalia closed her eyes and counted backwards from five.

“Hello, Lieutenant-Commander,” she greeted the girl. Esther waved cheerfully, over the rising giggles from the communications station. Atsa Sandoval had smuggled a flavored gelatin packet onto the bridge, and he and Lehtonen were poking it through the air and laughing hysterically.

Natalia sighed and reminded herself that  _ Challenger  _ wasn’t actually a military vessel. 

Finally, she managed to work her way to the situation room and let herself through the automatic door. She gave a sigh of relief. Half the ship may have lost its mind along with its grav-plating, but she trusted her captain’s good sense and judgement.

“Good morning, Commander,” Matos greeted her politely, waving with a badly-hidden smile from where she was sitting, cross-legged and upside-down on the ceiling.

“Oh,  _ sir,” _ said Natalia in tones of only slightly exaggerated despair. Matos laughed, not unkindly, and gestured around at the ship in general.

“Commander,” she said with a wide smile, “Sometimes you just have to go along with it. Did you have those reports?”

“Shall I float them up to you, Captain?” Natalia asked flatly. Matos just laughed again and gestured toward the ceiling to her right.

After a moment in which Natalia Yurovsky reconsidered all of the life choices that had brought her to this point, she pushed off the floor and settled upside-down across from her captain.

“So,” she began. “Engineering estimates we will have warp capability back within fourteen hours…”

* * *

The mess hall was an adventure at the moment.

Lieutenant Niwat Srisati was having no end of trouble eating his breakfast. He imagined it would be easier if he was more awake, but Sickbay was still full to bursting even with all of their patients stabilized. The power fluctuations and loss of gravity had all the staff running themselves ragged. Niwat honestly felt a bit guilty for leaving them in the lurch like this; but he’d been on-duty longer than anyone, and Dr. Atakan had taken one look at him when she came in this morning and ordered him flat-out to eat something and go to bed. As if she was doing any better.

Unfortunately, with everyone floating idly around the mess hall bumping into each other and the ceiling, that was easier said than done. And his muffin was trying to escape. Again.

“So, uh,” said a weapons tech nearby. “Has anybody figured out how to get something to drink? I’m dying.”

“Esther has,” a white man with Science-blue piping commented. The group floating in his general area laughed at some inside joke. “She pulled up some old video of pre-warp astronauts. The trick is you put everything in squeezable sports bottles.”

“Great,” his friend said drily. “Good thing we all thought to bring sports bottles.”

“Esther did,” a chorus of Science officers said in unison.

A Tactical-striped ensign grinned and rolled her eyes. “Plastic baggies work too. I heard the chef team talking about it, they’re transferring all the beverages now. They should be ready in an hour or so.”

A nurse never really was off-duty for real, was he? Niwat thought idly as he made a mental note to comm Dr. Atakan before he went to bed. There should probably be a system of water delivery set up once those baggies were ready, if whole groups of crewmembers weren’t able to get reliable hydration at the moment...

Niwat realized with a jolt that his muffin was bobbing gently across the room and scrambled to catch it. You know, he might be getting the hang of this. It was almost fun, honestly. He grinned a little as he pulled himself across the ceiling in pursuit of his errant breakfast. Almost there…

A split-second, crackling hum was the only warning they got before the grav-plating in the mess hall switched back on at full Earth-standard strength.

* * *

Slow and steady, Vena told herself.

Slow and steady slow and steady  _ slow and steady wins the—  _

She let out a soft sigh of relief as she managed to pluck a floating autosuture out of the air before it could bump into anything important.

That only left the rest of Sickbay. She closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath.

At least the staff had mostly gotten the hyposprays squared away. In theory a hypospray shouldn’t be able to release itself, but stranger things had happened and she would prefer not to take any chances. The real problem was that shipwide gravity had dropped while Sickbay was out of red-alert, which meant some things had been improperly stowed and were now somersaulting casually through the air waiting to stab innocent doctors in the face.

An exoscalpel turned a lazy pinwheel two inches from her eye, making her yelp and more than proving her point as she gingerly reached up and snagged it.

And even that was to say nothing of the existential confusion caused by various bodily fluids deciding to go on vacation halfway across the room. Thankfully there was very little of that. Vena Atakan  _ was  _ good at her job, thank you, and with modern medical technology there would really be no excuse for most wounds to still be open after three days.

Her eye twitched with the need to disinfect her medical bay all the same. But, first things first. Besides, the last thing they needed was to introduce  _ more  _ free-floating chemicals. Just crossing the room was like stepping into a minefield already.

The door comm beeped. Thankful yet again that she’d insisted on rerouting that control, Vena tapped her wrist. “Sickbay.”

The voice that responded was jarringly artificial, which threw Vena off-balance for a moment before recognizing it as Tisarr’s hallmark.  _ “Engineering to fix your gravity, Healer.” _

Whispering a fervent prayer of thanks, Vena replied, “The lock should be disengaged. I can’t get to it from here, I’m afraid.”

A pause while the translator worked; then, an unaltered burst of rough, somehow feline laughter, and a familiar tawny shape swung through the door as it hissed open.


	2. Chapter 2

“...And assuming the department still has gravity when we get back, we should have the new comm array finished in about two hours.”

Esther grinned and lifted her sports bottle like a toast. “Rage on, my minions. Jae, your lot on track for throwing me that scanner report?” Her second-in-command hummed absently, and Esther sat forward, jabbing her with a chicken tender. Chef had flat-out refused to let anyone use silverware until gravity was reliable again and was only providing finger foods just in case. Probably for the best. “Jae. _ Challenger _ to Lieutenant Sar Jae.”

Jae blinked and made an expression that was almost apologetic. Esther waved it off. They were off-duty, she wasn’t gonna knock her people for dozing off. Jae’d been pulling longer hours than any of them.

“The report should be ready by the time we get back,” she said.

One of the others—Esther didn’t know the folks not on her shift by name yet; she worked with numbers, not people—punched Jae lightly on the shoulder. “Obviously something more interesting that you’re thinking about.”

Jae rolled her eyes. “I’ve been trying to figure out a decent way to navigate between areas with gravity.” She tapped her knuckles absently on her wheelchair. “The transition is difficult.”

One of the guys made a sympathetic face. “Well, you can keep swimming the zero-g portions,” he offered. “We’ll grab the chair for you. We can spare someone to shadow her, right ma’am?”

Esther ever-so-casually took a bite of her chicken tender. “You better not be talking to me, Ensign, ‘cause I know what I told you people about calling me _ ma’am _ or _ sir _or any of that shit.”

Jae smirked. “I know what Yurovsky told you about swearing in uniform.”

“We’re off duty,” Esther informed her. “And that barely counts as swearing, don’t be a—”

_ “So we’ll have someone stick close until gravity’s working, right, Esther?” _ the guy said loudly.

Esther snapped her fingers and pointed to him without looking up. “There it is. ‘Course we will.” She sat back and nodded to Jae. “But if you want to figure something out so you can do it on your own, I’ll bet we can.” She started turning the problem over in her mind. “Electromagnetic wheels,” she decided. “The bulkheads are mag-resistant but I could get around that. You’d have to stay five hundred feet away from Navigations and the memory core at all times and two hundred feet away from anyone with a pacemaker…”

“I honestly just want something that works,” Jae said quickly. “If Larry’ll grab the chair, I’d rather focus on our scanners.”

“Rocket boosters,” Esther informed her. “You’re missing out. Wheel-mounted grappling hooks.”

“I’m glad you’re on our side, sir.”

“Don’t call me _ sir, _ minion.”

The table broke out into laughter and then private conversations. Esther stifled a yawn and leaned back, squeezing some water into her mouth. She’d really gotten lucky. Not just the position—she’d _ earned _ this commission but she knew how young she was, she knew what a leap of faith Command had made trusting her with it. But there’d been no guarantee the transition would be easy. Half her department was older than her; Jae was one of the younger ones and still had almost five years on Esther.

She’d expected to have to prove herself in this job, and she’d been ready for it. She hadn’t actually been prepared for professionally enthusiastic greetings and the unilateral support of her department, but she wasn’t complaining. They were already learning to read each other’s minds. Each other’s _ code, _ now, that’d take a bit longer. 

She should’ve known better than to worry, Esther thought. Starfleet vetted its crews carefully. Of course she wouldn’t have any trouble. Everyone should be able to trust their team…

“...overrun with cat people, isn’t it?”

Esther’s head came up as the sound of laughter reached her from the next table over.

“Just a few,” answered some blonde guy with piping in Engineering gold. “It sure feels like more with the tails getting everywhere, though!”

“Hope they don’t shed,” one of his friends remarked, and there was more laughter.

Esther very casually set her sports bottle down on the table and stretched.

“It’s weird,” said one of the girls. Tactical, this time. “I mean, they seriously _ meow _ at each other. It’s like being at some kind of furry convention. At least they wear clothes.”

One of the Engineering grunts smirked over his baggie of water. “Hey,” he said. “At least there won’t be any mice in Engineering.”

“Do you think they eat mice?” one of the others asked.

His friend shrugged with a grin. “I dunno. Do you think they’ve got fur, you know, _ everywhere?” _

Yeah. Okay. That was enough.

Esther leaned back, casually resting her elbows on the back of her chair, and raised her voice as loud as she could without, technically, yelling. 

Esther Hasdai was Aussie born and bred. They could probably hear her back at Starfleet Command.

_ “Good question, Midshipman!” _ she announced brightly. “You know, I’ve got a couple questions about these aliens myself.”

Now that the entire mess hall was suddenly acutely aware of their conversation, the little knot of jokesters was starting to look uncomfortable. Esther bared her teeth in what was technically a smile.

“Like,” she said loudly. “How do you reckon they managed to learn a completely alien engineering system in a couple of days well enough to help us fix it? Don’t you think that’s a good question, Jae?”

Jae was a smart woman, and judging by the look on her face, she’d overheard the conversation too.

“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” she agreed.

“Right? Or how about this one: How do you lot suppose they’ve stayed so upbeat and positive, when almost their whole crew was murdered by slavers a few days ago? Think maybe it’s a cultural thing that drives them to go out of their way to be so helpful? Hey, Larry, if you were one of a dozen survivors after _ Challenger _ got blown out of space, how much use do you think you’d be on an unfamiliar alien ship where nobody spoke your language?”

Larry looked vaguely disgusted by the other table, but he forced a cocky grin. He was a good enough sort, Larry.

“Hell, Esther,” he said loudly. “I’m barely any use on _ this _ ship.”

That got laughter from the mess hall.

“Any more questions?” Esther asked the knot of deeply blushing crewmen. “Didn’t think so.”

* * *

**Captain’s Log, Supplemental**

While _ Challenger _’s crew are bearing up admirably under the circumstances, the long hours and tension of the ongoing repairs are beginning to take their toll on shipwide cohesion. 

With all hands needed fixing problems in their own divisions and Engineering decimated, our well-oiled machine is working in uncoordinated jerks and long pauses. There’s simply too many things that need to be done with manpower that has been severely limited. Dr. Atakan has informed me that some of the injured survivors should be released from Sickbay within the next day, which will ease some of the demand placed on their departments and allow for more flexibility. 

The novelty of failed grav-plating has worn off somewhat. I’ve written special dispensation to have Lieutenant Lehtonen’s quarters added to the secondary priority list for gravity repair once the most essential areas have been restored; he has been extremely concerned over the effect the stress of zero gravity might be having on his cat.

Tisarr, meanwhile, has worked miracles with the few Engineering crewmen she has. That is...actually something of the problem. Incidents of harassment or dissatisfaction that are clear cases of anti-alien sentiment have been dealt with; however, several crewmen have expressed frustration over certain practices the acting Chief has set up. 

While my judgement on these practices is that they are not fundamentally different from workarounds a Starfleet engineer in the same position would implement, I cannot entirely ignore their frustration. Having spoken to Captain Shol, Tisarr’s thirteen years of experience in the engine room of a high-warp starship clearly qualify her for this position, and in the interest of doing what is best for my ship and its crew that experience simply has to outweigh the fact that she does not technically hold any Starfleet rank; she has skills and judgement that I have not seen in the ensigns eligible to succeed Lieutenant Burkowski. But at the same time, I understand their feelings of frustration at being passed over in favor of an alien civilian.

I’m comforted at least by Commander Yurovsky’s support in my decision to place Tisarr in command of Engineering. We share every confidence in her ability to earn the department’s respect. In the meantime, I only hope our Caitian guests are not too affected by the tension.

* * *

Tisarr flicked hear ears cheerfully as the healer laughed.

It was a weird style of conversation; it was hard to land a joke with awkward pauses after every sentence to let their handheld translator units catch up. But they made it work. 

Tisarr was honestly thrilled by the attitude these Humans had. Oh, sure, there were some sour berries in every crew, but for the most part they acted like the communications barrier was an exciting challenge, not an irritation. 

She gathered that, while Cait was home to almost three dozen disparate languages, the planet of Hume possessed _ thousands. _ It sounded like it must be an unbelievably confusing place, but it was probably the reason they didn’t seem frustrated by not being able to understand Tisarr’s words. It must be normal, to humans.

And these translator units! To her knowledge, no one had tried to build anything like it before. There were linguists in every species, and the Vulcans were annoyingly good at codebreaking and translation; but a learning, fluid, automatic universal translator? One that could be used by anyone, not just captains and diplomats? Nobody had ever bothered. Nobody had ever _ cared _ that much.

It had only been a couple of days, and they’d been hectic and exhausting days on top of that. And the human communications officer had _ still _managed to learn enough Caitian that he was able to talk to Shol about their homeworld—slowly, haltingly, but with an accent good enough to be native.

Humans, Tisarr had decided, were a very decent species on the whole. Of course, not everyone on the ship was human.

She flicked her tail to twitch a magna-spanner into the air, holding out a hand as the tool drifted obligingly into her palm. As it turned out, human quick-heal _ did _ work on Caitians. Her broken arm was as good as new already. “So,” she said. “Can I ask?”

The healer, who’d said her name was Vena, glanced at her translator and made a face, wiggling her hand in the air. Tisarr thought about her phrasing and tried again.

_ “May _ I ask a _ question?” _ she asked, this time pointedly exaggerating her words into her own translation unit. As they waited for the question to translate, Vena fought back one of those strange expressions humans made. It seemed to be their equivalent of a Caitian twitching their ears forward; some of Tisarr’s people still got freaked out by how easily these humans bared their teeth. But the intent was clearly friendly.

“Of course.” 

Tisarr didn’t need that one translated; she was picking up bits and pieces of their language. There was a brief pause as Tisarr fiddled with settings on the spanner in order to lift up another section of floor and examine the circuitry.

“There you are,” she announced. Then, “I’m curious. How did a Vulcan end up a healer on a human ship?”

Reading non-Caitian facial expressions wasn’t Tisarr’s greatest strength; but the sudden, careful neutrality coupled with the stiffness of Vena’s body language weren’t hard to read.

“You don’t have to answer that,” she said quickly. “It’s not my business.”

To her surprise, Vena smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said. Tisarr didn’t catch the rest of the sentence, but her translator did. _ I am sorry. I am not actually a Vulcan, that is all. _

Tisarr looked up from carefully cutting free a series of isolinear chips to cast a quizzical look over Vena’s high eyebrows and pointed ears.

Vena lifted her chin slightly. _ A hybrid, _ she said. Tisarr didn’t need to speak her language to understand the careful coolness in her voice. _ My father is human. He raised me. _

Tisarr’s tail flicked in surprise. Hybrids weren’t unheard-of in the galaxy, but not with Vulcans. After a moment, she tilted her ears forward and gave a slow blink. “That’s pretty rare,” she said, and then turned back to her work. “Watch that hypospray. I’m sorry if my question was rude.”

She watched from the corner of her eye as Vena snagged the floating hypospray, hoping she’d said the right thing. Tisarr didn’t want to draw conclusions; maybe Vena’s birth was an accident, or maybe there was something even uglier than that under the surface. Either way, she didn’t seem to want to talk about it.

Vena’s posture was much more relaxed now, though. _ That’s quite all right, _ she said. _ But some people object to...hybrids. _

The word translated as “hybrid,” anyway; but Tisarr noticed that the term Vena had actually said out loud was different from the one she’d used earlier. Apparently this Starfleet tech was too polite to translate slurs yet.

Tisarr gave a rude snort. Her mother would have swatted her, told her she sounded like she was coughing up a hairball, but Vena’s lips twitched in that strange human smile. “We have those kinds of people too.” Caitians weren’t cross-fertile with any of the other species in the galaxy, as far as they could tell. But there would always be assholes who sniffed at interspecies marriages; some even looked down on crosses between different Caitian _ clans. _

Vena smiled properly at Tisarr’s scorn. _ I appreciate your support. I was warned to expect resistance to the idea from some alien species. _

Tisarr’s tail lashed her flanks before she could control her reaction. That wasn’t the kind of thing a supportive superior officer should say to an underling, in her opinion, but she didn’t know the context, so she let it go.

“I’m almost done,” she promised, and rolled her eyes as the panel spat out a shower of sparks. “I still say grav-plating is more trouble than it’s worth.”

The strips of fur above Vena’s eyes lifted in surprise. Tisarr was learning to love that about humans (and half-human hybrids, apparently); they made so many expressions with just their faces! Without mobile, expressive ears or tails, it was a clever adaptation. Unfortunately it made them very hard to read sometimes, when the changes were so tiny.

_ You do not use grav-plating? _

Tisarr shook her head dismissively. “It wastes time,” she explained. “Especially in Engineering. We use centrifugal gravity for the gym and mess hall—and diplomatic areas, if it’s a military ship, I think. There’s self-contained grav-plating in the medical bays just in case we lose the centrifuge, but that’s all. It’s a liability, and it’s too expensive to maintain.”

There was a long pause as Vena read the translation and tried to work around the terms that hadn’t translated properly. While she did that, Tisarr flipped a switch.

There was a low whine, and medical implements clattered to the floor as gravity was finally restored to the medbay. From somewhere out of sight, Tisarr heard muffled cheers. Vena bared her teeth—“smiled”, she corrected herself.

_ There is something to say for that philosophy, _ she allowed. _ Though personally— _

The lights in the medbay flashed red. Tisarr’s ears flattened reflexively against her head moments before the red alert sirens began to scream.


	3. Chapter 3

“Well,” Captain Matos murmured evenly. “They certainly have  _ my _ attention.”

There was a weak ripple of forced laughter around the bridge. Atsa didn’t join in; hopefully, the Captain wouldn’t take offense. The fight against the Andorian pirates had been bad enough; now, in a ship that had only gotten gravity working on the bridge an hour ago and still lacked warp capability, he couldn’t quite manage gallows humor.

The ship was a Klingon design, again. It had come out of warp directly in  _ Challenger’s _ path and opened fire immediately, a single disruptor blast that flashed across their trajectory.

Atsa glanced across to the helm. Aleksi had snapped to manual control at the speed of thought when the ship opened fire; only a sharp  _ “Steady, helm!” _ from the Captain had held him still, and the lieutenant was visibly quivering. That was reassuring, actually. If they had to go into evasive maneuvers, Aleksi Lehtonen would be halfway through a barrel roll before the rest of the bridge even realized they’d moved.

“D4 battlecruiser,” said Esther, bending over her readout. “Scans indicate disruptor cannons and energy signatures that might be photon torpedos.”

“No damage,” Commander Yurovsky reported. Her voice, like the Captain’s, was controlled and even. That’s why they got to sit in the big chair, and at the moment Ensign Atsa Sandoval could not be more glad of it. “It appears to have been a warning shot.”

“I thought it might be,” said Captain Matos, still in that calm, quiet voice. “Hold her, helm. Let’s not make our friends nervous.”

Aleksi’s pale ears turned red. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

He couldn’t see her, but Matos inclined her head in acknowledgement anyway. “If they do open fire again,” she said, “Take evasive maneuvers and don’t wait on my word. At this range I  _ need _ your reflexes, Lieutenant, don’t start second-guessing them now.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, but his voice was stronger this time.

A light flashed on Atsa’s console, and he forced himself to take a deep breath. He was a Starfleet officer. He’d seen combat before. He’d trained for this.

“Captain,” he reported, and was proud that his voice was almost as natural as hers. “The enemy ship is hailing us.” His fingers danced over the board as he moved to isolate the hailing frequency; he paused for a moment and corrected himself. “They’ve sent a recorded video file.”

Captain Matos raised an eyebrow and shared a glance with Commander Yurovsky. “Apparently they’re not interested in a conversation,” she observed with just a touch of dryness. “Onscreen, Ensign.”

It took a few more seconds to route the video file through the translation matrix; luckily Hoshi Sato had been savvy enough to realize how important Klingon fluency would be to the system, and a great deal of time and effort had been devoted to improving the universal translator’s Klingon algorithms. The video’s status flashed green, and Atsa transferred it to the primary display.

The face was not Andorian this time. It was Klingon, and the message, translated into slightly mechanical Earth Standard, was brief.

_ Human vessel, _ the Klingon said shortly.  _ We have scanned your ship and you are in no condition to fight or flee. Stand down all weapons. You are to consider yourselves prisoners of the Klingon Empire. Boarding parties will arrive in ten of your minutes and are not to be resisted. There will be no further warnings. _

“Message ends,” said Atsa. “With your permission, I’d like to double-check that translation manually.”

Captain Matos nodded. “I don’t see much room for error, Ensign, but it can’t hurt. Before you do, though, try to hail them.”

She didn’t sound hopeful, and Atsa shared her lack of optimism. He dutifully sent a hailing signal to the Klingon ship; to no one’s surprise, not only was it not answered, the signal itself was not acknowledged. They  _ had _ to hear  _ Challenger; _ they were barely a kilometer apart and Atsa was using an open hailing channel. It was the equivalent of blowing an airhorn in the other vessel’s ear. They were being completely ignored.

“No response,” he said unnecessarily.

“No,” Captain Matos agreed. “But I live in hope. Commander, I don’t intend to surrender to the Klingons out of hand. Thoughts?”

Commander Yurovsky said, straight-faced, “I think that is a sound tactical position, sir.”

“Yes, well, I appreciate your input.” Even Atsa had to crack a smile at that. The Captain continued, “My concern is that significant armed resistance is likely to result in a photon torpedo through that giant hole in our hull.”

“We should avoid that,” called Esther from her console.

Aleksi, in a quieter voice, added, “I can roll ship and buy us some time, but it won’t help us for long, ma’am.”

Atsa, meanwhile, had discovered another problem.

“Captain,” he said.

Commander Yurovsky didn’t hear him. “Given the likelihood of survival in Klingon captivity, sir, I don’t think we have a choice. My suggestion would be to evacuate the area around our airlocks. Let as many of the boarders get as deep as possible into the ship, and then mount as much resistance as possible and hope that the Klingons are unwilling to fire on that many of their own people—”

“One moment, Commander.” Captain Matos raised a hand. “I agree, and please see it done, we don’t have time for debate. Ensign Sandoval, what is it?”

Atsa twitched some sliders experimentally, hoping to be wrong. “I was preparing a distress beacon,” he explained. “Just as a matter of course, I know it’s useless even if it were safe to send a signal while we’re being watched so closely. But I’m trying to find an ideal frequency for it and...there isn’t one, Captain. Everything is white noise. It looks like a general localized interference field around  _ Challenger.” _

Esther looked over with a frown. “Why?” she asked bluntly. “Why bother? We don’t have long-range comms anyway.”

“I don’t know,” Atsa told her. “But there’s no way to get a transmission on or off this ship. They’re jamming us.”

He’d expected this to be one more piece of bad news. What he hadn’t expected was for his captain to go very still—and then, inexplicably, smile.

“Are they really,” she said softly. 

* * *

Lieutenant Thomas Edwards grit his teeth as he held himself behind a rounded section panel and checked his phase pistol.

This was a waste of manpower.

At least he couldn’t claim the aliens had been ungrateful or stupid about the situation. They might look like animals, but they were clearly smart enough to recognize an alarm siren when they heard it. They’d been at their assigned quarters when it went off and at least the big one—the one with the black mane who looked like if the villain from that Disney movie came to life—had possessed the sense to stop a passing Security officer and ask where his people were supposed to go.

It was just—apparently, they weren’t supposed to go anywhere. The Commander had decided that there wasn’t time to get the aliens to any of the main defensive areas, so five of them were here, guarding the creatures’ door.

The worst part was, she was probably right. Everyone else had an assigned post, and there wasn’t time to arrange a guide for a bunch of aliens that took twice as long to have a conversation with as anyone else because they didn’t speak Earth Standard. Couldn’t, probably; he’d be amazed if they were physically capable of understanding, let alone mimicking, the words. 

It was quicker and safer to send the security detail to them and have them all sit tight. And with their “essential areas” deployment so obvious, it was unlikely the Klingons would waste time coming here anyway; it wasn’t on the way to anything important. So if the boarders got down here it’d either be a straggler...or the ship would have been taken anyway.

But he could be up guarding Sickbay. Instead he was here, bobbing around and being grateful that energy weapons didn’t have a recoil, because otherwise there would be no hope of keeping cover. If Klingons did come down this hallway by force, he was going to die defending alien civilians.

...Well. Civilians, he thought. He could bear that. He could bear the thought of giving his life to defend helpless civilians. And he told himself to be fair—the aliens had argued like hell trying to convince the Security team to give them weapons and let them fight too. But that wasn’t how things were done.

He unhooked a carabiner from his belt and used it to clip his jumpsuit to the dividing panel. His men copied it; there’d be no one accidentally floating into the open.

If he was going to waste his time and training like this, he was going to do it right.

* * *

It was obvious these humans weren’t used to null gravity.

Tisarr wasn’t being rude; it was equally obvious that the humans had trained for zero-G combat, because they were doing all the right things in that regard. But training could only get you so far, and a Caitian spacer  _ lived _ in zero-G. What was well-trained and drilled in the humans was second nature to her, and she darted through the corridors at three times the speed of the aliens around her.

Alarms blared around her, different from the battle-stations alarm she knew from the battle against the Andorian pirates. Vena had translated it for her, and Tisarr knew her place in a boarding situation.

On a merchant ship, which was much more lightly manned than  _ Challenger, _ everyone had to fight if it came down to it. They generally didn’t allow that; Shol wasn’t stupid, and he knew pirates would be better-armed and in better trim than his people. Their boarding drills had a much heavier focus on keeping calm and ensuring violence didn’t break out, but there would always be enemies too brutal to submit to. She imagined the security detail here would handle the situation this time, but…

An announcement rang out over the repel-boarders alarm; Tisarr didn’t have time to check her translator unit, and doubted whether it would be able to pick the words out from the chaos anyway.

One, however, needed no translation. 

It was hard to stumble in midair. Still, for a split second Tisarr stopped watching where she was going and crashed at full speed into a human lieutenant heading the other direction.

The pronunciation was different, the accents slightly off. But it wasn’t hard to figure out the etymology of  _ “Klingon.” _

Shaking herself free of the human, Tisarr kicked off the floor and threw dignity to the wind. Caitians had been grassland hunters once as humans had been tree-climbers, and she clawed and bounded her way along walls and floor and ceiling as she raced for her engine room.

* * *

The repel-boarders siren abruptly switching off was almost more nerve-wracking than the alert itself had been.

Larry’s fingers were slippery on the phase rifle. He’d trained with them before, of course; everyone assigned to  _ Challenger _ had to be ready to defend her if it came down to it. But once he’d passed his firearms course, aside from the required practice sessions every month he’d never touched a weapon again. 

He was a  _ scientist, _ a computer programmer and data analyst. He studied energy signatures and used that information to learn about his galaxy. He didn’t concentrate that energy in pulse-phase units and use it to blast holes in other sentient beings.

Unfortunately, Klingons  _ did. _

So here he was, in Astrometrics alongside the small security team and the MACO required to access the weapons locker. They should have been crouched behind the consoles; that was what he’d trained to do, but they didn’t have grav plating back in Astrometrics yet. A few of them were hiding under and behind consoles anyway, keeping one hand on the underside to keep from floating away. Their assigned security officer had taken advantage of the flexibility zero-G gave them; most of the phase-rifle bearers had been floated up to lay on top of cabinets or hide behind support units or simply float high in the corners to act as snipers. The Klingons would have to bottleneck to get inside, and they might hold them off this way. 

Might.

At least, looking around, he wasn’t the only one in blue-on-blue piping who was more than a little green. The only one missing was Jae; with Esther on the bridge she was the senior officer down here, which meant it was her job to make sure all of their data was ready to scrub itself if compromised. If she had time after setting that up, she’d join them.

It’d be a relief to have her back. She had a better marksmanship rating than he did.

A few moments after the wailing siren cut off, the comm units on the walls came to life.

“All hands, this is the captain speaking.” Captain Matos sounded calm. She was supposed to, Larry knew, but her steadiness still helped. He took a deep breath and adjusted his grip on the rifle. “We expect boarding parties to land within the next two minutes. I want to commend you all for your quick response. I give you now to the Tactical officer.”

There was a short pause before a harsher, crisper voice took over. Larry had never spoken to Commander Yurovsky before. He tried not to think that he might never get the chance.

“Security squadron leaders have their orders,” Yurovsky informed them. “Our forces are concentrated entirely around essential locations in the hope of luring the Klingons as far in-ship as they will come.” There was a pause. “We have made the difficult decision to value concentration of force over mobility. All access tunnels have been sealed with a bridge code, and we lack the manpower necessary to secure transfer routes to Sickbay at this time. Each security force has several officers trained in emergency first-aid. For now, that will have to be enough.”

Larry felt his stomach lurch. It made sense, he couldn’t blame them, but...they were cut off from Sickbay, behind nothing but a sealed door, without even a back exit from the department…

God, he wished Esther was here. She made everyone feel immortal, and he needed that now, because he mostly felt like he was already dead.

His vision was blurry; he realized furiously that there were tears in his eyes and wiped them away, where they floated off. He could do this. He was fine.

A firm squeeze on his right arm made him jump so badly he cracked his head on the ceiling; looking around, he relaxed when he saw Jae floating up to join him. She’d stowed her chair somewhere, and pushed off his shoulder to slide in behind a display screen and click the safety off her phase pistol. Her expression was grim when she looked up at him, but she nodded. After a moment, he swallowed hard and nodded back.

For almost a full minute, they waited in silence. Larry thought nothing could possibly be worse than that kind of tension. 

And then, faintly, somewhere off in the ship, came the first terrible sound of a disruptor firing.


	4. Chapter 4

Matos held the back of Ensign Sandoval’s chair in a death grip.

Natalia doubted whether the young man had noticed. Sandoval had slipped a headset on in order to block out all distractions, and his eyes were closed as he tapped a toggle switch on his console. Once every few seconds, cycling through channels. Other than that nearly-inaudible click, the bridge was silent.

“YES!”

Even Matos jumped violently at Esther Hasdai’s jubilant cheer. Natalia drew her phase pistol on reflex, Lehtonen screamed outright, and Sandoval didn’t even twitch, brow furrowed in concentration.

Eyes wide, panting slightly, Matos pinched the bridge of her nose and said, _ “Yes, _ Lieutenant-Commander?”

Hasdai had the grace to look sheepish. “Sorry,” she said. “But I did it. Frequency matched. I tied all the scanners we have working in to Atsa’s short-range comm arrays and locked them to the Klingons’ jammers.”

Matos gave a real smile at that. _ “Well done, _ Esther,” she said warmly. Then, “Deep breaths, Lehtonen. Commander,” she added in an undertone, and Natalia turned to look at her. “We need a plan.”

Keeping her face carefully neutral, Natalia inclined her head. She turned and leaned on the back of Sandoval’s chair herself, conveniently facing their conference away from the rest of the bridge.

Matos, never unclenching her vice grip on Sandoval’s chair, leaned in and lowered her voice further.

“We have to assume we can hold the ship,” she said. Natalia tried and failed to hide a wince, and her captain grimaced. “I know. It’s a lot to assume, but if we can’t hold against the first assault our plans won’t matter anyway.”

It was a fair enough statement. And Natalia had been turning the problem over in her head since the initial video message...she checked the time. Twelve minutes ago. 

This wasn’t like a space battle, where the bridge had full awareness of events and Natalia Yurovsky could _ do something, _ contribute, help to keep her people alive. There were no explosions rocking the hull, no energy blasts or constantly-updating plots. Just terrifying silence and the knowledge that not far away, the people under their command were fighting for their lives and it was a fight too many more of them would lose.

“The Klingon shuttle,” she said. “If your trick with Hasdai works, and we can take the boarders, they’ll have no reason to suspect their own shuttle. We could rig a bomb, or send boarders of our own.”

“That’s a thought,” said Matos. “Find me whatever layout estimates we have of the D4 class. My concern is that our people are too centralized. I know.” She raised her free hand slightly. “It was necessary given our numbers and I think it was wise. But we’ll have a job and a half moving anyone, and if the Klingons think to start forcing their way into our access tunnels…”

“It could work to our advantage,” Natalia countered. “We know those tunnels better than the Klingons, rigging traps would be easier and they’d have no effective retreat.”

“Also a thought, but there are too many essential systems to be worth the risk.” Matos shook her head. “I think they’re going to have to hold where they are. I only hope we don’t become a cautionary tale in the Starfleet textbooks someday.”

Natalia gave a half-smile. “They’ll certainly name a maneuver after us already,” she said. There was nothing else to do, while they waited for Sandoval to find what he was looking for. “The Challenger Clothesline.”

“I rather like that, actually.” Matos nearly smiled. “Let’s not make it posthumous.”

Before Natalia could think up a clever retort, Sandoval straightened like someone had jabbed him with a hot poker.

“I have it, Captain!”

Matos’ grip clenched so hard her nails poked holes in the upholstery, but none of the tension or excitement showed in her voice. “Tell me, Ensign.”

Sandoval flipped a switch and rough, untranslated Klingon filled the bridge speakers, interspersed with disruptor and phase-pistol fire. The ensign closed his eyes and held up one finger, listening. An Earth Standard translation blinked and flickered on his console readout, but he paid it no attention. With a language he knew, in a high-stakes situation, Atsa Sandoval was notorious for trusting no translation matrix but the one in his head.

After a few moments of angry Klingon shouting, without opening his eyes, Sandoval snapped his fingers and mimed writing something. With nothing else to do, Lehtonen darted over from the helm and produced a scratchpad and pen.

Sandoval opened his eyes and began wordlessly scribbling on the pad in a shorthand Natalia couldn’t decipher. After about thirty seconds, the shouting faded into more generic wordless battle cries and Sandoval switched the audio back to his headset and pulled it down around his neck.

“Sorry, Captain,” he said. “I needed to make sure I got that.” 

He turned his chair, nearly yanking Matos into his lap as she found herself unable to release her vice clamp in time. Natalia gripped her shoulder to keep her upright.

“It worked,” Sandoval reported, eyes alight. “Esther’s frequency match is fooling them. That conversation was from near Astrometrics, and it was a low-ranking Klingon trying to tell his superior that their reports of armed resistance weren’t going through.” He scanned his notes. “The superior called him incompetent, demanded the comm unit, and his first assumption was that we were jamming their communications.” 

Matos and Natalia stiffened, and Sandoval smiled. “But he examined the device and realized it was their own jamming signal. He then called Starfleet...well, it doesn’t really translate, but he apparently doesn’t think much of our electronic countermeasures. They’re convinced it’s their own jamming and we’re just too technologically inept to compensate at all, so it’s stronger than it should be.”

Matos breathed out. “Well done, _ both _ of you. We at least have a fighting chance, then.”

And yet the deceptively simple trick with the wall comms, Natalia noted privately, had not been Sandoval’s idea. That had been an order from the Captain, and one which she herself would not have thought of. If they survived this, she intended to make a note of it in her logs.

Such a little thing, on the surface. When a connection with a wall comm was established, a red indicator light activated; a small upgrade from _ Enterprise _ and _ Columbia _’s models. There had been complaints from their predecessors about attempts to contact other parts of the ship with damaged or offline wall comms and no ability to tell whether or not the things were functional. Innocent enough, unless your tactical situation required you to be able to use those wall comms in order to listen in on enemy plans. Klingons were no fools; they would notice an indicator light going active.

But Klingons were not Starfleet officers, either. And while they would certainly notice a light turning on and deduce its meaning, what if all the lights were already on, every light on every wall comm? If that were the case, then they ceased to be noteworthy. Little red lights on every unit could mean anything. The most logical assumption, and the one Matos had been willing to bet the Klingons would make, was that it was a standby light.

If it was a gamble, it was one with very low risk, and it had paid off. Maintaining an active connection with every comm had taxed the internal communication system a bit, but Sandoval had simply kept most of the connections muted and switched audio to his headset, one by one, sifting through hundreds of units to find scraps of enemy conversation.

A little thing, but a masterstroke.

“Ensign,” Matos said. “Keep listening. Any mention of changes in the tactical situation, I want to hear immediately, do you understand?”

Sandoval nodded crisply. “Yes, Captain.”

“Good. Commander, transfer the comm line to the Armory from Ensign Sandoval’s console and see if you can’t get them started on that Trojan horse.”

“Sir.” Natalia dipped her head and crossed to the tactical station. First things first; she opened a channel to the Armory, checked the confirmation code of the officer who answered it, and then relayed instructions to pull and rig as many photon torpedoes as possible before closing the channel and pulling up what information they had on the Klingon D4.

For a few minutes, the bridge lapsed back into silence. This time it was broken by occasional, professionally detached reports from Ensign Sandoval, who seemed to have isolated the comm panels closest to the handful of battles and was switching between them.

“Astrometrics seems to be holding...Sickbay holding...Order to transfer a squad off Sickbay to reinforce the bridge approach...Armory is rallying, the Klingon leader is ordering his troops to give no more ground. Engineering is falling back to their secondary position—contact from Engineering, Captain!”

Matos looked up from the D4 archive and opened her mouth to acknowledge the statement, but Sandoval had already transferred the audio to the main speakers.

The stilted computerized voice clashed with the sound of energy fire, and Natalia bit down on a curse. If the fighting was close enough to the main engine room that Tisarr struggled to be heard over it, the situation was truly getting desperate.

_ “—to Bridge. Engineering to Bridge, respond. I cannot do this all day, Trainee. Engineering to Bridge—” _

“Bridge,” Matos said. There was no need to press a response stud; the line was open. “What’s your situation?”

_ “Bad,” _ the computer said serenely. _ “But if you do not have a plan, I do.” _

Natalia instinctively exchanged a glance with her captain. The look Matos had shot her was sharp and focused, but there was no accusation in it; it was a question, nothing more, and she shook her head slightly.

Matos leaned closer to the microphone. “We have a plan in motion for once the boarders have been dealt with,” she said. “Any ideas as to how we might accomplish that are welcome.”

_ “Acknowledged.” _ Somehow, the electronic voice managed to sound grim. _ “Please connect this communication panel to the crew quarters.” _

* * *

Major Leo Harvey risked reaching up to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The movement jostled the plasma burn covering his left arm, and he nearly cried out from the pain—but he couldn’t distract his men, and he wouldn’t give the Klingon bastards the satisfaction.

The bridge approach was holding so far, but that wouldn’t last. His people were being taken out, and the Klingons were slowly starting to advance. He gave it another fifteen minutes, at most, before they were overrun. But they had to try. 

This was what they did. They had to defend the bridge.

They needed reinforcements, someone to come up on the Klingons from behind, but they didn’t even have enough people to defend the absolutely essential locations. Astrometrics—all of their navigational data, scanner information, things they could not allow to fall into enemy hands. Engineering. Sickbay. The armory. And the bridge. Five doorways. And not enough men to hold even that.

If they even had a handful of people...

A disruptor blast whistled past his ear, and he ducked further behind the section panel and hoped for a miracle.

* * *

“Is everything in place?” Sofia asked quietly. Yurovsky nodded, once, from her tactical station as Ensign Sandoval translated the question into his headset. After a moment, he looked around and gave a thumbs-up.

Sofia sat back in her chair and said, “All-call, Ensign.”

The intercom tone heralding a bridge announcement was light and airy, not intended to jolt or alarm anyone; they had sirens for that. Even so, it was so unexpected that Larry actually stopped and looked at the comm unit. 

Jae shouted his name and then reached out and grabbed him by the hair, yanking him a foot to the right just as a Klingon fired at the spot where his head had just been.

“Thanks,” he managed, voice cracking. 

As he fought against the lack of gravity to wiggle back into his hiding spot, Captain Matos’ voice spoke over the clamor of battle.

_ “All Starfleet personnel,” _ she said. _ “Your orders are: On blackout, cease fire. I repeat: On blackout, cease fire immediately.” _

“What do you reckon that means?” Larry called. He’d given up on his previous position in favor of wedging himself in _ behind _ the storage unit. There was less visibility, but better protection.

Jae shrugged and took a potshot at the doorway. “Stay with us,” she said as one of the Security guys turned and shot the Klingon who’d almost killed him at point-blank range. “If you die, you _ know _ Esther’ll kill you.”

Larry didn’t have a retort for that, because it was true. Or at least she’d make him feel really guilty about it…

The lights turned off.

It wasn’t auxiliary power, and it wasn’t ship’s-night mode either. The visibility strips and darkroom lighting had been disabled or overridden, the overheads switched off completely. Even what few display screens hadn’t been deactivated as part of the boarding preparations went dark like someone had ripped out their power cords.

Instinctively, everyone defending Astrometrics held their fire. 

A second later, the screaming started.

* * *

It was...horrifying, Vena thought. In so many ways, it was like something out of a horror movie. The sudden blackness, and then the shouting and screams. The flashes of light and noise and mountain-lion war shrieks, the confusion, as their attackers were slaughtered by something faster than them, more maneuverable, something they couldn’t even see.

Klingons were formidable opponents. Skilled warriors, canny ship-handlers. They were, always, well-armed and well-armored, well-trained, fearless.

But they couldn’t see in the dark. And Klingon spacers, like humans...like Vulcans...might train in zero-gravity, but they didn’t _ live _ in it.

Not like Caitians.

Vena Atakan’s vision was sharper than most; not, she had been forced to explain hundreds of times over the course of her life, by any statistically significant degree or due to some inherent superiority in Vulcan visual acuity. She just had good eyesight. And she could make out...flashes. Green eyes glowing in the dark, still for just a split second before vanishing; tawny shapes lit up amber and green by weapons fire, caught for a moment as if in a strobe light.

But they moved too fast. By the time a Klingon had aimed, his target was gone. The Caitians didn’t seem to _ care _ which way was “up” or whether they were kicking off a wall or a ceiling. They could see their opponents; and their opponents, already unprepared for a rear assault, could not see them.

It was difficult to watch, as the firefight had been difficult to watch. But the Klingons had come to kill them if they could, or do worse. And the Caitians...had, it seemed, a debt to repay. Perhaps more than anything, the crew of the _ Crirraa _ had a score to settle with armed Klingon cruisers preying on helpless ships in deep space.

And there was a beauty in it as well. As horrific as the violence and the death were, nine civilian merchants bearing unfamiliar weapons, unarmored, unprotected, had rushed a Klingon attack squadron—to rescue Vena and her people. Yes, there was beauty in that. Even a doctor could acknowledge so much.

They didn’t stop; there would be other firefights, she knew, in more desperate condition than the one around Sickbay. Shol paused just long enough as the lights flickered back on to meet her eyes and nod in acknowledgement before pushing off and racing down the corridor.

Less than twenty minutes later, Captain Matos came back on all-call and announced that the coast was clear.

* * *

Only one thing left to do.

Sofia watched the plot on the main viewscreen, which displayed the readout from Esther’s station. _ Challenger’s _ science officer had her short-range scanners back now; there was no need to use them to boost a jamming signal with no more Klingons left to try to comm back to their ship.

“Shuttle has left the Klingon interference field,” Esther reported. Aleksi Lehtonen flexed his fingers.

“Very slowly, Helm,” Sofia told him. “Roll ship.”

The preprogrammed flight path of the shuttle arced toward the Klingon small-craft bay, though at something of an odd angle. If Starfleet estimations of the layout of a D4 cruiser were correct, an explosion there would do little but make their enemies angry. But if they could alter the least-time course just slightly…

“Three.” She’d given Yurovsky full control over their Trojan horse’s timing.

“Klingon ship is attempting to hail the shuttle,” Ensign Sandoval reported quietly.

“Two.” 

She didn’t acknowledge the statement, and the shuttle continued its innocent flight toward its own vessel’s shuttlecraft bay, right past the starboard pylon.

“Detonation.”

The pylon disappeared in a blinding flash of light as Sofia punched a signal button on her armrest. Down in Engineering, Tisarr poured power into impulse and _ Challenger _ surged forward like a greyhound breaking its leash, twisting under Aleksi’s hands to interpose her undamaged hull plating—just in time to absorb the damage as a cascading series of explosions rippled through the Klingon cruiser and found its warp core.

* * *

**Captain’s Log, August 5th, 2154**

At the risk of jinxing something, we appear to have found some room to breathe.

Approximately seven hours ago, our Science and Engineering teams managed to get our spare communications array installed. _ Challenger _ is now back in contact with Starfleet Command. We’ve received rendezvous coordinates that Lieutenant Lehtonen estimates at two weeks’ travel at low warp once we have that capability. Tisarr believes that repairs to the core system and inside the nacelles themselves should be completed within the next thirty to ninety minutes, which will allow us to finally power up the warp core.

Some systems will need to be completely replaced before _ Challenger _ is up to her full capability, and there is still that minor issue of the hull being exposed to space along half the ship; but once we make rendezvous with friendly forces, those repairs will be possible. What’s more, the hard manual reset of the ship’s power systems for Tisarr’s trick with the lights seems to have rebooted our grav-plating.

If I read Caitian body language at all, she was more than a little embarrassed to admit that she fixed the problem by turning the ship off and back on again. It seems our species have more in common than it might appear.

Morale among the ship’s company is improving. Being boarded by Klingons left many of them understandably shaken, but our victory has helped to counteract that effect somewhat. Dr. Atakan and her team have issued mandatory medical exams for the crew in the aftermath of the last week, both as a medical precaution and as a way to perform psychological evaluations at the same time—without the stigma of having any specific crewmembers singled out. Even when we should know better, shame can do terrible things.

I also take this moment to formally acknowledge the sacrifice of those crewmembers killed in the line of duty—and one, a Caitian by the name of Kirsak, who had no obligation of duty at all. She was shot point-blank by a disruptor, in the process saving the life of Starfleet Engineering officer Dominic Santos. She joins Ensign Jana Francis, Lieutenant Thomas Edwards, Lieutenant…

* * *

A few of the crew looked up as Sofia stepped off the turbolift and sat up straighter, but she waved them back to what they were doing. With the number of times they’d already almost died on this voyage, the last thing anyone needed right now was unnecessary formality.

Shouting and laughter from across the room said at least one group had taken that sentiment to heart. Aleksi, judging by the way his chair was placed, had been eating by himself and somehow been roped into joining the others.

As best Sofia could tell, Lieutenant Sar and Ensign Larold had placed a container of some kind—a soup bowl, it looked like—on an empty patch of floor. They were taking turns flinging playing cards into it. Occasionally they flung the playing cards at Aleksi. Esther, in turn, had put her feet up on the empty chair across from their helm officer and was occasionally pegging her underlings with semi-rotten grapes.

They’d finally repaired the cold storage units, but it appeared there had still been some casualties. At least the crew was having fun with it.

Most of the surviving Caitians were grouped together around a table; but here and there one or two of them had branched out. Sofia smiled slightly as she noted the lack of any buffer space between the Caitian group and the blue jumpsuits around them; the reluctance to make contact had been especially obvious given the cramped quarters of a starship. Now, where golden or oak-brown ears stood out in the mess hall they were simply part of the greater flow. There weren’t enough translation units for every Caitian to have one; but they were welcomed, nonetheless.

Tisarr herself was absent; Sofia had gathered she was made a bit claustrophobic by the crowded mess hall. Dr. Atakan was the same way, generally eating in her office with perhaps a few close subordinates, and there were evenings when Sofia followed that example.

But not tonight.

She retrieved a plate from the racks. Technically, the captain had every right to call down and have something arranged for her. There was even something of an expectation that she would do so; but, again, not tonight. Everyone who wasn’t on duty or collapsed in their bunk sleeping off the exhaustion of their hectic repair schedule seemed to be drawn to the few communal gathering places on board the past few days.

Which...oh, dear. Meant all the tables were essentially full. It really wouldn’t be fair for her to ask anyone to move, but someone was bound to do so soon if they noticed her looking for an open place…

“Captain.”

Sofia turned toward the greeting, smiling. “Commander. Fancy running into you, do you come here often?”

Yurovsky didn’t quite laugh. Someday, Sofia promised herself. She was going to make it happen.

“Only as often as I can’t avoid it, sir. It might start raining breakfast food again.”

“Oh, _ Commander Yurovsky,” _ Sofia said despairingly. “You really _ don’t _ have any sense of adventure.”

“You have enough for three of you, Captain, I’m not concerned.”

_ “Touche.” _ Giving up on the idea of sitting, Sofia counted her blessings that tonight was apparently turkey-burger night and tried to hold her drink and plate in one hand so she could pick up her burger with the other. Yurovsky, who had apparently joined the Esther Hasdai school of wearing a sports bottle on her person, reached out smoothly and took the glass of water off her hands. “Thank you.”

There was something deeply centering, Sofia thought, about hot, warm food after a long period of stress. And the hum of conversation, the quiet, exhausted catharsis, was...healing.

“Do you know, Commander,” she said casually. She set her burger down and reached out to take a long drink of water before primly handing it back to her XO. “We really ought to start thinking about where we’ll go after our repairs.”

Yurovsky gave her the most innocently bland look imaginable. “The Celes asteroid cluster, sir?”

“You’re doing that to annoy me and it won’t work, my naturally sunny disposition is immune. I mean it. Where next? We can’t just let _ Enterprise _ make all the interesting discoveries. I really think we ought to consider…”


End file.
